>> Live from London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in London, England. Joep is my cohost for two days of live coverage. Happy to welcome back to the program Dan McConnell, who's the vice president of Open HCI Solutions at Dell EMC. Dan, great to see you again. >> Great to be back. Always a pleasure to see you guys. >> Yeah, so Dan, actually first time I met you, same time I first met Joep was at the Vienna show two years ago. Dell has multi-year partnership with Nutanix. I see you stateside here and there at some Dell events also. But you know, Dell is Nutanix biggest partner as an OEM. So give us the state of the state. >> Actually just crossed, last quarter, crossed over a billion dollars in sales. >> And I think overall-- (stutters) Said $3 billion worth of total sales, so a billion of that through Dell. That's pretty impressive. >> Yep, yep. I jokingly say, biggest quarter ever! Every quarter's the biggest quarter ever. And we expect Q four yet to be the biggest quarter ever. So it's a strong business, continues to grow, over 2,000 customers and growing. Continues to be a good partnership. >> It's funny you say but it's not joking, it is, every quarter is the biggest quarter ever, despite some people in the marketplace, oh, well that relationship's dead, right? So talk to us a little bit about the portfolio and where it fits, 'cause obviously the revenue numbers speak for themselves, the customers, and the like, so... >> Absolutely. My easiest way to describe it is HCI is, it's a style of architecture, right? Just like in the old three-tier land we had multiple arrays and our servers support multiple operating systems, just like in HCI we're gonna address the market with a portfolio. We've got more than one product. It is a portfolio to address the whole market. So the partnership continues. Strong focus on enabling the Nutanix stack. We're gonna be the best hardware infrastructure solution for the Nutanix stack. It's a portfolio approach, it's what makes us the leader in HCI across all of our products. And it will continue forward. So I know we always get that, well, you've got multiple HCI products, which one will win? HCI's a style of architecture. We're gonna have a portfolio. >> Yeah, we saw that in the CI space, we see it in every market. Especially storage, there's never been somebody that can get more than 20 or 30% of the market. >> So what makes it special? Running Nutanix on Dell, what makes it special? Why would customers wanna do that? >> Let's see, how long do we have? No. The easiest description here, one, I'll focus on LCM, lifecycle management, the thing that is core to Nutanix. Ease of use, one click, I'll use the one click. We actually have the best integration into their overall LCM package. It literally is one click from the Prism UI to update all of the server firmware as well. And it's cluster-aware. So we know how to evacuate, we know how to flash stuff, and repatriate the data. So it's actually, it's something we have that no one else has. We are, once again, like I said before, we will be the best hardware platform, best infrastructure to fit into the Nutanix stack. I'll say stack these days 'cause what was once HCI is now a list of single-word products that is a pretty big stack and growing. >> So you know, zooming into LCM a little bit. So back when I was at Customer, I build IS platforms. And that whole operational pain of keeping hardware up to date, keeping the firmwares up to date, that sounds like a very operational benefit for the teams working with those products. So how does this work into freeing up time for people doing other stuff on that platform? >> That is the whole goal. Hate to fall into catchphrases, but invisible infrastructure. The goal is to make the entire infrastructure easy, simple, invisible, such that more and more... IT is becoming the differentiation piece for businesses focusing much more up-stack in how to innovate around the business logic side of the equation as opposed to the infrastructure componentry. As IT becomes an innovation engine for customers, they need that focus more towards the business, less towards the bits and bytes of the infrastructure. All of what we do is focus to enable that. >> So even if you're talking about making infrastructure invisible, making it easy to operate and manage, there's still a lot going on in the infrastructure space. Specifically around hardware, around running applications. One of the things I learned is that you are now certified to run SAP on top of it. So please explain how that works, what it means for customers. >> Absolutely, absolutely. I don't know, we sat in places like this four years ago and people would ask, well, what workloads are good for HCI? We'd say Test/Dev and DDI. Nowadays it's everywhere. It's what workloads aren't good for HCI? And I woulda told you, you know, two years ago, well, big databases, blah blah blah. But at this point everything's within HCI. HCI has been the style of infrastructure that could run any workload. And our certification with SAP is just a huge instantiation with that. Matter of fact, I believe we are the only one that has a two socket and a four socket certified from an HCI perspective. Something we're very proud of, something we'll continue to lean into moving forward. >> Yeah, Dan, absolutely. When I've been talking to customers it's those edge cases. It was, you know, my AS/400 I haven't migrated over because I'm actually gonna modernize and put that stuff in the cloud or things like that. So any application on HCI today, Nutanix hasn't been sitting still though. We've been listening for the last two days, really growing the portfolio. What is the increase in products? What does that mean to the offerings from Dell? >> Sure, obviously we'll keep up with the Intel Heartbeat, we have a pretty big refresh coming up here early next year with what Intel calls Cascade Lake. Also, not just keeping up with the generations, but as Nutanix evolves, things like Buckets, you've probably heard Buckets mentioned this week. We've got some hardware platforms. I won't pre-announce any of my PowerEdge brethren platforms but we have some hardware platforms that are focused much more around storage density. So obviously a great fit for something like Buckets. So we'll look at, as Nutanix matures, what is the best fit hardware for that stack. >> There's been some updates as to how you handle the hardware and software, working with Nutanix, maybe explain how that works now. >> Absolutely. So we've got, we call it XC series, and XC Core series is the appliance, it continues on just as it was. It is software licensed and packaged with the hardware. And then recently we announced something called XC Core, which has all of the goodness of the pre-installation, all the software comes on it, it's easy to use, but the licensing, you can bring your own licensing, so to speak, from Nutanix. So the flexibility to either get licensing with the hardware in the appliance form, or bring your own license in XC Core, as is what we call it. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. When I think back a year ago is when Nutanix started talking about moving to all software. And one of the things I said is like, hey, this is a great opportunity for Dell and Lenovo just to pull everyone in. But it's not that simple, right? Some are still gonna wanna buy the software from Nutanix. Have you seen much change in your business and interactions with customers in the field after that change? How's it gone? >> Short answer is no. And before the formal introduction of Core we were... We had, we called them ELAs. We had large customers that were buying things in different forms, which is why we went to go do Core. We saw this trend happening. And with their shift to software, it just made sense. So the engagements with the customers continued to be I'd say almost in an appliance form, even though they're buying the software directly from Nutanix. So it's similar engagement, similar go-to market, different fulfillment model. >> Dan, how about looking forward? What do you see for the portfolio overall, and any places specifically we should be watching? You mentioned Buckets, anything else from the Nutanix side. >> Sure, sure. Obviously continue the LCM focus. Well one, I'll start with SAP, continue focus. We're gonna lean into SAP, we see that. And broader what I would call enterprise workloads. But also the Intel refresh coming up. From a hardware perspective you'll see Cascade Lake roll out across all the platforms. Also you'll see us introduce, or potentially introduce, some new denser storage platforms for things like Buckets. So continuing to drive the portfolio forward, offering it both in a appliance perspective as well as a core perspective. So it's a really broad portfolio today and you'll see that continuing forward. >> Yeah, just actually, so you mentioned there was a big focus talking about the new memory type of options, new things like NVMe, I know I've heard lots from Dell as to where they're going. So potentially that's areas where I would see that and some of the cloud native applications and the like seem a natural fit for Nutanix plus Dell in the future. >> Sure, absolutely. You'll see incorporation of NVMe. Some of the storage class memory stuff. So without pre-announcing, so to speak, obviously Dell, from a harder perspective, keen focus on these upcoming technologies and how to enable them. We work tightly with Nutanix on how to integrate them into the stack. So you will definitely see us take advantage of things like NVMe, things like storage class memory. Technology never sits still. The partnership we have between Nutanix and Dell helps us keep on the edge of that. Sorry, I'm gonna use the edge word. >> All right, if we had another hour, Dan, we would go there and talk about where that fits. (laughs) But I think we do have to leave it there. Thanks so much, Dan, for the updates, as always. Congratulations on the progress and look forward to hearing the best quarter ever in the future. And thanks so much for watching theCUBE. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix 2018 EU in London, England. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music) (electronic music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman.

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> And welcome to our live coverage here. Day three at Dell Technologies World 2018. We are live in Las Vegas. Hope you've been with us for the first two days. We have a great lineup here for you on day three. I'm John Wallace, along with Stu Miniman. Glad to have you along, Stu, it's always great to work with you. >> Thanks, John. Same for you. >> Good week so far for you? >> It's been excellent, my voice is holding up, it's been a long week. >> You're a busy man. >> Excited to get all of this, and heck, I'll be seeing Dan again next week at the big show. >> Dan McConnell's becoming like, he's like not even an annual visitor, you're like a bimonthly visitor here on theCUBE, right? VP of Converged Platforms. >> Stu: Fifth time, you get a free sandwich. >> Yeah, that's right, I got to punch card, I got to sign and get it punched each time. >> Yeah, nice to have you, Dan. Nice to have you back, good to see you again. Alright, let's just talk about the show, first off. Here we are, day three, we talked a little bit yesterday about customer discussions, conversations, so now you've had a little bit of time to soak this in and what you've heard from folks, and what would be your takeaway here? >> Sure, may spin this one a little bit, may have an angle here. Tremendous interest in HCI, and I'm not saying that just because I'm in HCI. No, but it's a lot of good, solid feedback from customers. It's starting to shift more in the mainstream, right? So as we see customers deploy it, more workloads get deployed on top of it. There's a tremendous amount of interest in HCI. When we look at all the graphs of customer interviews we're doing and analyst discussions we're doing, HCI is right there at the top of the list, in terms of subjects that we're talking about. >> Can you quantify that? Are numbers at all out there floating around, in terms of growth, in terms of what... >> Oh, from the HCI side, yeah. Most analysts will agree, it's about 70 to 80 percent in growth year over year. I'd say, from a Dell perspective, we're doing 138 percent, so we're actually growing faster than market. A lot of that's due to, we've got a, one, we've been in the HCI business for a while, two, we take a portfolio approach. There's never any one size fits all, so we actually take a portfolio approach to HCI. We've got what are multiple different consumption models, one that is an appliance, this is the server, the hardware, the software, lifecycle managed in an appliance. And then the next layer is what we call rack scale. Obviously, HCI puts some pressure on the network, right? High network dependency. Rack scale, what rack scale does is include the networking components in that engineered system attribute. Pretested, pre-designed, inclusion of both the physical, as well as the virtual network, and across both of those consumption models, we have a stack that is very VMware-centric, right? VxRail, VxRack SDDC, and we have a stack that is what we call Open HCI. Supports multiple hypervisors, that is XC series on the appliance and VxRack Flex on the rack-scale solution, so portfolio approach, cover the whole market, and we're really seeing it blow up, it's great. >> Dan, it's interesting. I think back to when people were first trying to wrap their brains around this whole HCI thing, it was like, oh, okay, I took server and storage, kind of smashed it together, some software maybe in there, but it was, oh, this is small-end thing, it's maybe four nodes, maybe getting to eight nodes, but you talked about the VxRack Flex, which we've been watching ScaleIO since before the acquisition, and all that solutions. Much larger configuration, some people said, oh, it's not even HCI, because I've talked to some customers, well, I can do a storage-only configuration or I can do a full hyperconverged configuration. We've seen maturation and some segmentation in the marketplace, so you know, bring us inside that, from, you know, the Flex business, just what you're seeing, what differentiates it from some of the other options. >> Absolutely, I'd say it's flexible. (dog barking) Dog barking next door. >> John: On cue. >> On cue. >> There he is again. It's one of the philanthropic Dell outreach programs, it's comfort pets. >> Therapy dogs. >> Therapy dogs, thank you. So we're right next door, no reflection at all on the guests or the program or whatever. >> They're in day three, too. It's been a long conference for them. >> We're getting punchy, alright, back to Flex. >> Back to Flex. >> Just explaining, yeah. >> So, back to your point. Flex... is flexible. We've got customers from four nodes, all the way up to over, large enterprise customers over a thousand nodes. Matter of fact, about 45 percent of our business comes from Fortune 500, so when you think HCI, like you said, HCI started in what was VDI. We're going to pick a workload, VDI's kind of linearly scalable, HCI was a good fit. Nowadays, it's multiple workloads, right? That flexibility, agility, ease-of-scale, people are putting more and more workloads on top of it. VxRack Flex, we've got, when you talk about scalable, up to a thousand nodes, literally 30 million IOPS, right? So, performance, I think we've got it covered. So it's definitely maturing, some of those larger customers are running anywhere from database, all the way to mission-critical applications. >> Dan, I actually did a case-study of one of your larger global financial companies a few years ago. Want you to talk about what they saw this solution at. This was a foundation for their private cloud. They use, in certain regions, public cloud makes sense, but in a lot of areas, this is the foundational layer of private cloud. A lot of times, people, oh, HCI, it is what it is, it's some boxes and some software, but talk about the private cloud angle. >> This customer, it's actually a very interesting storyline. They started off doing what we would call do-it-yourself, build-your-own, and loved the technology, as is predominant with HCI, continued to scale. Bought a lot, added on, added on, and as they continued to add, continued having discussions with them, and they actually love the technology, would love to be able to automate more, would love to spend less time setting it up as it comes in. So they actually moved up that consumption pyramid into VxRack Flex, which comes, as opposed to do-it-yourself, comes shrink-wrapped, roll it in. So they actually designed their infrastructure, their data center around what they call pods. Fairly large pods, but they've changed the consumption units on how they consume IT. They'll actually wheel in Flex pods, that's their new unit of consumption. Now, a Flex pod is... >> Not to be confused with another product called FlexPod. >> Oh, gosh, yes, VxRack Flex pods. Yes, absolutely. >> We unfortunately have run out of words in our industry here, so yeah. >> I'm sure you'll find something in the vernacular that will apply here. >> I'll try and burn that one from my memory, but good catch. >> So that's one use case. Just in general now, so what is the value prop for a customer today, as opposed to what kind of flexibility you're giving them, we've heard about performance, but how are people actually putting it to use for them, and what are they doing better, do you think, because of that? >> I'll start off, one, which is an architectural discussion, and I'll crunch this down pretty small. In the beginning, there was DAS, direct-attached storage, and it was fast, and it was easy to manage, as long as you had to manage one. You get a hundred units, and it was siloed storage, and it was hard, so the world came up with SAN. It's consolidated storage, it's great. I can carve it up, I can manage it from one place, and then we came up with flash, SSD, blindingly fast, and that storage controller started to be a choking point, so we moved the storage back into the server, a la HCI. >> Actually, we called it Server SAN for that specific reason. >> Exactly right, exactly right. Initial ventures into some of HCI, you could only scale the storage or only scale the HCI clusters as big as one given cluster. So you started building somewhat of silos of HCI. One of the beauties of Flex and VxFlex OS storage software is it can scale across multiple clusters. Those clusters can be VMware, they can be BareMetal, they can be Linux, so you start to gain all the advantages of HCI, flexibility, agility, kind of incremental scaling, pay as you grow, with all of the advantages of storage consolidation. I no longer have pools of siloed storage, I can carve up ones as needed, when needed, I can manage it all as one combined storage pool. From a Flex perspective, it's got some pretty nice architectural attributes, which give you the best of HCI and agility and scale, as well as storage consolidation. So we're seeing a lot of success there. >> Dan, I hear things like open, flexible, some of those environments, and I think about the service providers and requirements that they have for how they need to simplify their environments, super conscious on cost, how's this been doing in the service provider market recently? >> Absolutely, funny you bring that up. We actually talk internally, we've got a service provider team inside Dell, they focus on servicing the large telcos and other service providers, and we've noticed that their underlying infrastructure is very very similar with Flex, so we're in discussions to see how we land what they do on top of what we do as a standardized offering. Even right now, a lot of our customers are in the service provider space. That large growth, flexibility, and some of the underlying storage stack has multi-tenancy capabilities, where you can carve up and isolate, that lend itself very very well to service providers. >> Oh, go ahead, Stu. >> For people that know ScaleIO, anything new that they should be understanding? I understand it's this packaging as like a hardware model. Organizationally, it lives under the server team now, I believe it is. >> Absolutely, so two things there. One, organizationally, all the HCI stuff came in up under Ashley Gorakhpurwalla so it came in up under the server side, and then, so, ScaleIO is up under Jeff Boudreau, under Dan Embar, it's storage stack, it's in under the storage division. We work very very closely together. Second thing that's happening, there's a, one, we've been in the HCI world for a while, in the CI world for a while. We've quickly determined we can drive much better customer experience, much better customer outcomes, as we lean more towards an appliance or an engineered system versus a do-it-yourself kind of model. With ScaleIO, what we're trying to do is push it more into an appliance model, push it more into rack scale model, VxRack Flex. There's a outbound shift away from, kind of, what was ScaleIO as a software only and into more of an engineered system appliance offering, so with that shift, you'll see a rebrand from ScaleIO to VxFlex OS. It's just a rebrand of the software. >> So I'm glad Stu talked about organization, because you had to kind of reorg not too long ago, and so we had Ashley on yesterday, we talked to Jeff yesterday, as well. So from your perspective, now that you've had a few months to settle in, find your groove, how much of a difference do you think, as far as customer-facing, is this making in terms of responding to those kinds of needs and those desires. >> Sticking HCI with the server team has an awful lot of synergy. Obvious, compute-centric, scale, from a business scale perspective. So there's an awful lot of goodness in living in that same organization. Ashley's done it pretty well to make sure there's a lot of alignment, but we're also keeping a lot of the engineered system special sauce focus on the HCI side. So we're able to, one, better leverage a lot of the, what I would call, supply chain scale, the processes and go-to-market capabilities of an engine that is built around hundreds and thousands of units, right? That stretches across services, that stretches across factory and supply chain. Obviously, we want to drive HCI, we want to drive HCI in the mainstream and scale. Sitting right there in the server organization, they do scale, right? So lot of good learnings, lot of good synergy and leverage across teams. >> It's coming together for you. Nicely done. Thanks for joining us again, good to see you. You going to see each other next week, you said? >> That's right. >> We down in New Orleans, is that... yeah. >> Yeah. >> Alright, enjoy, and stay out of trouble, both of you. >> Absolutely, you know, one week in Vegas... >> Vegas one week, New Orleans the next, that's a recipe for an interesting time. >> Yes, that it is. >> Dan McConnell, thanks for being with us here on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Back with more from Las Vegas right after this. You're watching theCUBE from Dell Technologies World 2018. (upbeat techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (bright music) >> And welcome back here on theCUBE, we continue our live coverage at Dell Technologies 2018. We are in Las Vegas, and we are in the Sands right now. 14,000 people strong attended this year's show. And great energy, great buzz here on the show floor. Keith Townsend, I'm John Walls. We're joined now by Ben Gibson, who's the CMO at Nutanix, and Dan McConnell, Vice President over at Dell EMC. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Good to have you here on theCUBE. >> Great to be here. >> Thanks for having us. >> A lot of conversation about hyper, right, and hyper-converged and about some numbers that we've heard, that Dell's been talking about, that 60-plus percent of inquiries, discussions here from the customer is all about HCI. So how does that stack up with what you're hearing, first off, Ben or Dan, in the marketplace, and what's the driving force right now behind all that discussion? >> Absolutely, yeah, it's been, HCI, I guess the Nutanix partnership, we've been about four years, right? I'll jokingly say, back before HCI was cool. And more and more, what we've seen is in the early days it was, pick an application, okay, it's VDI. And that's kind of its starting point. But now, more and more, these discussions, it's not what app or what workload works for HCI. It's really which one doesn't work. I'm trying to throw everything I can on HCI. Which one should I park over here? So the interest has really, really flipped. And it's the ease of use, it's the flexibility, it's the incremental scale. So it's something that we've seen huge traction in on the Dell side. Obviously it's where our partnership with Nutanix, as well as some of our own solutions. It's tremendous growth. And year over year, we've seen stronger and stronger growth. So definitely getting traction. It's moving out of what is test and dev, and it's in core of the data center right now. >> And what's driving that, you think, in the marketplace? I mean, how's it responding, I guess to performance that it's seen from other early adopters, basically, and what's that motivation there? >> Yeah, John, you know, as Dan just said, there's a lot of growth in this space. And the market for hyper-converged in general, it's probably among, if not the top IT growth segment that we're seeing out there across the whole IT landscape. Analysts are pegging this as 60% or above year on year growth business, and the multi-billions of dollars. So I think what's motivating that interest, I think there's a huge surge that I think together we're seeing around data center modernization initiatives. There's a lot of need for application traffic growth and how our customers modernize their data center environments to keep up with that demand they're seeing, with the workloads that they're running on premise and those that they may be developing off prem and bringing it on prem or the like, it's really driving a lot of this hyper-convergence growth story that we're seeing out there in the market. >> So let's talk about some of the myths out in the market. Hyper-convergence, not enterprise-ready from a couple of different areas. One, let's talk about the relationship that Nutanix has with Dell. Global reach and scalability. Nutanix, not a hardware company. Nutanix is a software company. But the product is sold in a box. Those boxes have to be supported. How does Nutanix support global companies when you're a software company? >> Yeah, for us it is about software choice. But it's also about very strategic partnerships. And I count the Dell partnership we have as one that's been, in our history and moving forward, our most fruitful. It's about delivering different offerings in different ways for our customers to consume our joint hyper-convergent solutions. Just recently, we announced what we call XC Core, which now another option for Dell customers to take advantage of Nutanix HCI with Dell hardware and be able to consume via software license from Nutanix, buy and continue to buy their hardware platform from Dell, bring that all together in solution. So we have a real freedom of choice here that we drive out locally. It's a great combination with go-to-market reach with Dell, combined with innovation that we bring to the table together. And I think it's working really well, and promising. >> And even our services teams, to your point, have worked very closely together. Depending on which consumption model you choose, on the appliance side, we'll take L1, L2 support, on the Dell side. So as the products scale, we help that services aspect, that scalability, that reach. >> Yeah, so for a practical perspective, I'm a global company, I have retail shops in Germany, based out of the US, drive those out, who do I call in, how do I get support for that? >> The great news with this relationship is it's really the customer's choice and what their preference is. We have many customers where Dell is providing that global support model. We now have a new offering that allows the customer to choose whether they get their software support for HCI from Nutanix and continue their existing service relationships with Dell. The nice thing is we're not forcing customers in any one decision on this front, whatever suits their interests and their needs the best. >> So, next myth. HCI isn't ready for mission critical applications. Dell yesterday brought a customer that went head first and everything their mission critical systems, it's Celtic, a global hotelier, their reservation system, their big Oracle apps. Talk to me about the mission critical story, Nutanix, Dell together. >> One of the key, I don't know, just to exemplify this, we continue to get customer demand for four socket, recently, just released a four socket version of the XE Series. Four socket, that's database, what do you mean database on HCI? So yeah, it is continuing to grow into mission critical, exact status like 45 or 50% of HCI is deployed in the data center, all right. So, mission critical workloads, databases, there's no more mission critical than that. And the majority of them sitting right in the data center. So it's, that myth of non-data center, to the side project or VDI only, that might have been where it was two years ago, no longer. >> Yeah, I love myths because it makes for good marketing. We're seeing this trend. So obviously VDI was one of the first sweet spot workloads for HCI in it's infancy. We're seeing across our customer base now, and we talked about this in our New York Investor Day a few weeks ago, now we're seeing 60% plus of all workloads are tier one applications. Databases, other mission critical applications, that are running on HCI infrastructure, with Dell and Nutanix together. We've seen that really start to quickly shift over into that front. I think what the market should keep an eye out for is more and more not only customers running those tier one applications on HCI but you're going to start to see more and more of these major ISVs start to certify their major applications on HCI infrastructure. >> Poke at SAP Hana, I would love to see SAP Hana on Nutanix, that would be awesome. >> Ben Gibson: No comment at present >> Well you're kind of talking about trends in a way here, in terms of adoption, people wanting to do, I'm always kind of interested in the chicken and the egg. You're developing product, you're listening to customers, you're hearing their demands, and you're also trying to, perhaps develop in a vacuum, and give them new capabilities that they haven't dreamed up yet. So you do you work that in terms of that give and take and in your development responding to what the market wants and also driving the market to what you think it needs? >> I think what's proven to be very successful for Nutanix is, obviously we're very customer centric, we also have a strong opinion. Dheeraj our CEO talks about having a real strong opinion on architecture and vision for how do we innovate, how do we solve some problems that maybe our customers haven't faced yet? So I think it's a good balancing act. So we come to the table, we listen very carefully to our customers, we understand what their key challenges are but we come with an opinion as well. And so, conventional wisdom would say go down a certain direction architecturally well what if you collapse those three tier data center architectures, what if you move towards this hyper converged offering, how to you manage and automate and bring together more glue, if you will, across multi-cloud environments? That combines having a vision and a strong conviction of opinion about where it's headed combined with making sure there's always a check and balance what are our customers thinking, where are they seeing their challenges? >> No, absolutely. As customers step in to HCI we're seeing more and more people testing in different areas people looking to solve different problems with it. Typically, all around the agility, the scalability, the ease of use, but it is, like you said, there's a combination between opinionated and listening. Some of our best innovations have come directly from the customers. These are people who are using it in the field and are tripping over the new cases. So it's a balance. >> So Michael Dell on stage just talked about the ability of Dell to be able to run workloads wherever customers wanted run their workloads. So far we've talked about HCI, which is interesting, however we're going into a model where we need to run workloads in a data center, we need to run workloads outside a data center, and we need to manage that infrastructure. What's the Nutanix Dell story around managing workloads across hybrid clouds? >> I would say this is a big trend we're seeing in the market there's different terminology for it multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, right workload on right cloud platform at right time. When you start throwing those vectors in place it creates a lot of potential confusion and complexity, right? How do you determine what's the best cloud platform in terms of cost, in terms of the laws of phycics, in terms of latency, with SLAs with these workloads? In terms of laws of the land from governance and overall legal perspective. So you start to bring in, as the market moves towards multi-cloud, there's this vacuum that needs to be filled that we can fill here together. It's like how do you determine, what's the context, what's the right cost model for a particular workload that makes perfect sense to run on a public cloud platform, like an AWS or an Azure or a Google cloud? What other highly predictable workloads absolutely need to be run in a modernized data center environment powered by Nutanix plus Dell HCI? To me there's a lot of vacuum that can be filled by innovation with management, automation, context around making those decisions. And the last thing I will say, it's not just about technology innovation, it's an opportunity for our customers, I believe, to really evolve their careers to the next step. If you're an infrastructure manager and all of a sudden there's different platforms where the infrastructure resides, what better opportunity than to become that strategic consultant within your own enterprise to help make those decision with context and with good smarts behind it? >> I think you hit some good points. When you look at it, there's going to be multiple clouds and it's about enabling the choice and integrating with whatever the right cloud is for your needs. We've got virtue stream capabilities for tier one type cloud stuff all the way to Azure on the XE series we just integrated with OMS on the Azure side so we'll actually upload all of the stats and metrics into their log analytics solutions. It's enabling choice, enabling which cloud, there's going to be multiple clouds and different clouds are going to be optimized for different things so I think you'll see us embrace hybrid, embrace it across multiple clouds on the back end. I don't know if there's one size fits all. >> So opinionation, I think, is a great segue into what's important I think as IT managers are looking at solutions, there's no one vendor today that can that an end to end solution and say, you know, we're your one stop shop for hybrid cloud. So this is where opinion matters. What is Nutanix's opinion when it comes to how to deliver hybrid cloud? So this is what you will be judged on, can't be judged on the technology because the technology isn't there yet, but where's the vision? >> I think it starts and ends with make complexity, make the complexity with multiple cloud environments, with complicated legacy data center environments, make that all invisible. How do you radically reduce that complexity and we talk all about one click, one OS, any cloud. It's not just a nice marketing tag line I think it really stands for a principle and a vision around how do you make a lot of that complexity go away? So you can redirect a lot of these IT man hours over towards inventing more. We just launched a new campaign you're talking about freedom to invent, freedom to build the data center that you want to build. So it's about coming with that opinion that everything that was so complicated and the next big horizon is multi-cloud environments, how do you make that essentially disappear, go away, so you can reapply your IT resource to new things that can really impact the business. The last thing I'll say too, spiraling cloud cost, and so if you have a teenager at home and maybe you're brave enough to give that teenager the credit card and they're online gaming or doing something, so it's kind of that shock bill you get at the end of the month, depending on what workload you're running on what cloud platform you could have this teenager with the runaway credit card syndrome. So how do you simplify, or bring that context and visibility to the forefront to help make some of those smarter decisions? So that's some of the things that we like to think about in terms of removing barriers and empowering the customers to take back control of what could potentially become a rapidly disaggregated, chaotic environment. >> You just threw every parent off their mark right there. Oh my God the credit card! >> I've lived it. >> Are we going to hear some of this next week? I mean we've got your big show, you guys almost flip rolls, right? Dan you're hosting this week and for you Ben it's next week down in New Orleans. Give us a little sneak peak. >> We're really excited about next week. So Dan has been kind enough to host us here this week in Las Vegas, so it's a rough life next week >> New Orleans >> We go to New Orleans. We have our user conference we call .NEXT and Keith you're going to be joining us >> Keith: I will be there. >> theCube will be there >> Looking forward to theCube being there. So this is about bringing together it's a lot of early adopters, but increasingly it's about more and more customers that I would call more the early majority as you see hyper-converge start to surge, multi-cloud start to surge in terms of how do you fill that vacuum that's out there? That's what this conference is going to be all about. We'll have new announcements, we'll have innovations that we'll be demoing, and most importantly we're really about openness and this is about strategic partnerships. To the earlier point, show me a one stop shop that solve all this complexity and I'll show you unfulfilled promise. And so I think the work we're doing with Dell will be at the forefront talking about, hey, how are we working together to solve some pretty snarly issues here that we have to solve for our customers. >> Well, you're going to go home both of you and say it's been tough, two weeks on the road. You get no sympathy though, Las Vegas and New Orleans back to back. >> Not bad. >> It's a good way to go Dan and Ben thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. Look forward to seeing you next week >> Thank you very much >> down in New Orleans theCube continues here, we are live in Las Vegas at Dell Technologies World 2018.

>> Announcer: Live from Nice, France, It's theCUBE, covering .Next Conference 2017 Europe brought to you by Nutanix. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching SiliconANGLE Media's production of The Cube here inside the Acropolis Conference Center in Nice, France. Beautiful location, happy to welcome back to the program off the keynote stage this morning, Sudheesh Nair, President with Nutanix, and a first-time guest, someone I've gotten to know through the industry, Dan McConnell, Vice-President of the CPSD group inside DELL EMC. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. >> Dan: Thanks for having us. Sudheesh needs no introduction, but Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, your role inside of DELL EMC. Sure, I guess, I've been at DELL for about, I don't know, 18 years, in various forms, engineering, CTO, product management. Nowadays I've got a collection of the CPSD businesses. Chad will refer to it as the horizontal businesses but basically all the things that are multi-hypervisor in nature. XC series, clearly one of those products, one of the long relationships we've had with Nutanix, very successful. Matter of fact, coming off Q2 was our strongest quarter ever. We're still closing Q3 so I can't talk about that, but safe to say these last six months will be six months of the strongest we've had with Nutanix and the XC series. I've got a collection of products from Block to FlexTech C Series. Yeah, so you come from what was the DELL side of DELL EMC, in through, of course, the DELL VMware relationship, been a strong one, driven a lot of joint revenue for the companies, yeah. Yep, absolutely, it's been great. Been good getting to know Sudheesh over the years. It's been multiple years at this point. >> Sudheesh: Almost four years now. But it's been a great relationship. Sudheesh, please. Yeah, first of all, thank you for having us. It's always nice to see you. And I still am amazed by all this equipment and how professional you are when it comes to doing these sort of things. It's very nice to be here with Dan. He's one of the nicest guys in the company and I'm not just saying because he's sitting here. A very good human being, it's always been a pleasure. It's almost four years we've been working together. Sudheesh, our audience loves when, they're looking forward to this session because, come on, DELL EMC, Nutanix, wait, they're friends, no they're competitors. No, yeah, they're, you know, it's a mix together. They say it's like the macaroons. It's, a couple of pieces go together, some of the flavors you like, some maybe you don't as much. Probably a bad analogy. Bring us up to speed as to kind of the Dell relationship. You know, how important is it to Nutanix? I know it's something that I talk to customers that are running Dell EMC and say, "Does it concern you at all?" And it is something that at least is on the radar for most customers. I'll try to give a shorter answer. It's a long answer question. The first thing is, this is a relationship that is built to last. I know that it is not an easy relationship, but let me also be honest about, look inside the industry and tell me a single relationship that is absolutely black and white. I mean, it's not that long ago when in one of the VMworlds, I don't remember who exactly, but someone from VMware actually said, "We're not going to lose to a bookseller," right? And then in the last-- >> Stu: Yeah, he's a VC now, so doing quite well for himself. Yeah, he's a great guy, it was his call, yeah. Again, it's a point in time of opinion, and I would do the same thing because we all compete with our heart and mind. It's not about that point. The fact that the company evolved, and in the last VMworld I think the CEOs of both AWS and VMware were hugging it out. Does that mean they've built a relationship that will not have conflicts? Absolutely not. I fundamentally don't think that the relationships in IT industry specifically will no longer be black and white, and it will always be shades of gray. The question is, should we be focused on customers who wants us to stop bickering and deliver what's right for them, and continue to focus on the overlaps of interest as opposed to focus on the conflicts that will arise. Absolutely well said. It's clear, and Dell's always been focused on a strategy of customer choice and flexibility. One of our key strengths at DELL EMC now is the portfolio, the fact that we've got multiple offers, the fact that it's a focus on the customer, what the customer wants, giving them flexibility as opposed to always trying to pigeonhole a specific product. It's interesting because I've been watching since the first days of the relationship. Dell's goal is to be leader in infrastructure. Nutanix's goal, be an iconic software company. Well, you're not going to be a server manufacturer, there's room there. So, Dan, why is Nutanix best on Dell? That's a great question. So one, the long relationship, right? So, we actually have teams of people who focus on integrating the platform and the software. There's a software stack in there, we call Power Tools internally that, long story short, manages all of the firmware stacks as well as, essentially lifecycle management of the hardware up underneath Nutanix. So, one piece is the hardware integration. The second piece, which we talked about a year ago at .Next, that we would be focused on integrating the broader Dell EMC portfolio, namely data protection. So, you'll see in upcoming weeks, we've already announced it formally, it gets turned on here in a few weeks, tight integration of Data Domain and Avamar with the XC series. Not just to reference architecture, but actual integration into the management. So, full lifecycle integration of data protection leveraging Data Domain, Avamar, tightly integrated into XC series, keeping that focus of ease of use, lifecycle management not only around the infrastructure, but also from data protection. So, hardware integration as well as tight integration of other pieces of the ecosystem. One other piece there, not to take too long, but not only data protection but we're also leveraging our relationship with Microsoft, and you'll see us integrate XC series into Azure with things like OMS, with our Log Analytics solution, so building out that ecosystem around the infrastructure. Yeah, Sudheesh, the Microsoft relationship's an interesting one, of course. You know, Dell, very long, strong relationship. I remember Satya Nadella up onstage with Michael Dell at Dell World years ago. It seems like a good opportunity for even deeper partnership. I think it's not just Microsoft. I think Dell EMC is the single largest vendor in this space and ecosystem, for example Pivotal. The innovative things that Pivotal is doing, Nutanix has an opportunity to partner with that because of the ecosystem. The global support, the global reach that Dell has, we have access to that. Customers get choice. Pretty much every customer who's buying anything in this industry probably have a contract with Dell. We have access to that. So, it requires a level of maturity for the business to sort of turn off the noise and listen to the music. We have been able to do that, and I know that people would love to see a fight, and yes, sometimes we have friction, and I think that is healthy. But by and large both companies have figured out the most important thing is to focus on customers, do right by them. So, Sudheesh, I think it would be fair to say that both companies have a sales culture that many outside call a bit aggressive. And especially where it's been interesting and sometimes challenging to watch is when it hits the channel. So, I know a number of channel providers, love Dell, love Nutanix, and have felt pressure sometimes from the Dell side to move to some of the other products, many have stuck. How do you balance that to kind of keep the channel happy, keep them working on that? You're absolutely right. I think both companies have a sales-driven culture, no question about it. And Nutanix, even though we are a younger company, much smaller in size, I don't think our aspirations and the fighting spirit is any less. In fact, in some cases it might even be out there. However, what we have done is we always focused on partners as part of the customer in the same ecosystem. That is, do right by the customer, do right by the partner. And I think that applies to both companies. What we have done early on is actually put together some guard rails between companies, how do we approach when those sort of conflicts arises, number one. Number two, we put together processes in the field when it comes to dual registration which is somewhat convoluted on the back end, but extremely delightful on the front end. Now, that doesn't mean there won't be friction. What we've done is we made sure that number one, the frictions are exceptions, not an example always, and second, when it comes up, we talk. So, he's on my WhatsApp. When something really blows up he will say, "Sudheesh, what's going on?" It's less and less now because our people have actually done a pretty good job of managing it. But ultimately, the one thing that'll continue to sustain and grow this relationship would be trust and communication. In the last four years, we know the people. We have built the communication, we speak the language, and because of that we are able to overcome all those problems. Yeah, the key is when those arise, getting the right people involved and ultimately doing right by the customer. There's always going to be conflict, this, that in the field. It's getting the right people involved early managing it and making sure we're putting customers first, not getting them in the middle of it. >> Sudheesh: Absolutely. Alright, so Dan, one of the things we heard from Nutanix today and I've been hearing all week, Intel Skylake. You've got 14 Gs available. Since it's not announced yet as the date, what kind of guidance can you give, and how's that rollout going to look for customers? Especially, I love your viewpoint as you know the server world forever, and you've got a broad portfolio. How does customer adoption across the various buying modes happen? I'll dance around this a bit and say stay tuned, very soon you'll hear some announcement around the 14th Generation PowerEdge. >> Stu: If you're watching the replay, call your rep now, it might be ready. Exactly right, so yes, stay tuned, very, very soon. We've already talked about it back at Dell EMC World. You can expect us to fully embrace the 14th Generation PowerEdge. We've already having some conversations with folks in the field. Obviously, we've got the PowerEdge line out there already. It's actually, the adoption of 14 G has been very, very strong, so we expect that to pick up here on the XC series very shortly. So, like I said, stay tuned. I have to dance around a little bit, but it'll be very, very soon. But one point, it's not available any later on the XC than it is on the other hyperconverged offerings that you have, correct? Correct. Yeah, so that's, I think, kind of the main thing. But that also tells you that we don't just take the same server and ship it out. We actually go through a different process to make sure that this can actually run mission critical applications. That's part of the problem as well, we have to do this right. Take a lot of time hardening that, what we would call standard server, so that's what's in process now, and almost done. I'd like to give you both a last word. Talk about customers, talk about anything we should be looking at down the road from the partnership. Dan, we'll start with you. Sure, you'll see continued, what I'll say tight integration, focus on the ecosystem. I think big steps with data protection integration, focus on Microsoft. You'll see more integration in that vein filling out that overall ecosystem. Partnership continues to be strong. I think it's a very good combination of software, hardware, and ecosystem. So, on the Dell EMC side you'll see us bring that ecosystem focus, and continue working with these guys. Obvious integrations on the hardware side with some exciting technologies like NVNE and RDMA. So, we'll continue to leverage the hardware technology to promote HCI and to drive HCI, make it stronger, and continue to focus on the overall ecosystem. So, we're excited for the relationship, and I'll hand it over to Sudheesh. Yeah, I think, see Nutanix, we always were a software company. But taking a product like this without the help of an appliance form factor would not be feasible, because any problem happened, it would be our problems. But now that we have the last five years behind us, we know how to make it work. What sort of products do we need to build to support the installation process, the upgrade process, lifecycle management, all of those things are done. Now starting next year, you'll see Nutanix making a conscious decision to become a truly software company, without the reliance of being, pushing through hardware. Our sales organization will be retooled and restructured to become, and incentivized to focus more and more on software, and less and less on appliances, which will bring companies like Dell EMC and Nutanix closer, because they have the footprint. Some of the conflicts used to arise basically because we had our own appliances as well. And once the sales organization is differently incentivized, you will see the trust building faster between the resellers and the companies. So, I am very optimistic because of not just the technology vision. Nutanix with hyperconverged, and the Calm and Xi, and everything else that we laid out. We know that for us, hyperconverged is just the foundation, and the support for everything that we're building. That fully aligns with Dell EMC's aspirations on how Nutanix should proceed. So, we're pretty excited, but always cautious about what could go wrong, focused on those things. As long as we talk and communicate, and we focus on customers and partners, I am pretty confident on the future. Sudheesh Nair, Dan McConnell, thank you so much for catching up. Welcome to The Cube alumni. Much appreciated. He's a pro already. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix .Next in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching The Cube. (electronic music)

>>At the beginning of the last decade, the technology industry was a buzzing because we were on the cusp of a new era of data. The promise of so-called big data was that it would enable data-driven organizations to tap a new form of competitive advantage. Namely insights from data at a much lower cost. The problem was data became plentiful, but insights. They remained scarce, a rash of technical complexity combined with a lack of trust due to conflicting data sources and inconsistent definitions led to the same story that we've heard for decades. We spent a ton of time and money to create a single version of the truth. And we're further away than we've ever been before. Maybe as an industry, we should be approaching this problem differently. Perhaps it should start with the idea that we have to change the way we serve business users. I E those who understand data context, and with me to discuss the evolving data space, his company, and the upcoming data citizens conference is Felix van de Mala, the CEO and founder of Collibra. Felix. Welcome. Great to see you. >>Great to see you. Great to be here. >>So tell us a little bit about Collibra and the problem that you're solving. Maybe you could double click on my upfront narrative. >>Yeah, I think you said it really well. Uh, we've seen so much innovation over the last couple of years in data, the exploding volume complexity of data. We've seen a lot of innovation of how to store and process that data, that, that volume of data more effectively or more cost-effectively, but fundamentally the source of the problem as being able to really derive insights from that data effectively when it's for an AI model or for reporting, it's still as difficult as it was, let's say 10 years ago. And if only in a way it's only become more, uh, more difficult. And so what we fundamentally believe is that next to that innovation on the infrastructure side of data, you really need to look at the people on process side of data. There's so many more people that today consume and produce data to do their job. >>That's why we talk about data citizens. They have to make it easier for them to find the right data in a way that they can trust that there's confidence in that data to be able to make decisions and to be able to trust the output of that, uh, of that model. And that's really what is focused on initially around governance. Uh, how do you make sure people actually are companies know what data they have and make sure they can trust it and they can use it in a compliant way. And now we've extended that into the only data intelligence platform today in the industry where we just make it easier for organizations to truly unite around the data across the whole organization, wherever that data is stored on premise and the cloud, whoever is actually using or consuming data. Uh, that's why we talk about data citizens. I >>Think you're right. I think it is more complex. There's just more of it. And there's more pressure on individuals to get advantage from it. But I, to ask you what sets Culebra apart, because I'd like you to explain why you're not just another data company chasing a problem with w it's going to be an incremental solution. It's really not going to change anything. What, what sets Collibra apart? >>Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think what's fundamentally sets us apart. What makes us unique is that we look at data or the problem around data as truly a business problem and a business function. So we fundamentally believe that if you believe that data is an asset, you really have to run it as a, as a, as a strategic business functions, just like your, um, uh, your HR function, your people function, your it functioning says a marketing function. You have a system to run that function. Now you have Salesforce to run sales and marketing. You have service now to run your, it function. You have Workday to run your people function, but you need the same system to really run your data from. And that's really how we think about GDPR. So we not another kind of faster, better database we know than other data management tool that makes the life of a single individual easier, which really a business application that focuses on how do we bring people together and effective rate so that they can collaborate around the data. It creates efficiency. So you don't have to do things ad hoc. You can easily find the right information. You can collaborate effectively. And it creates the confidence to actually be able to do something with the outcomes of it, the results of all of that work. And so fundamentally I'm looking at the problem as a, as a business function that needs a business system. We call it the system of record or system of engagement for the, for the data function, I think is absolutely critical and, and really unique in the, in our approach. So >>Data citizens are big user conference, data citizens, 21, it's coming up June 16th and 17th, the cubes stoked because we love talking about data. This is the first time we're bringing the cube to that event. So we're really gearing up for it. And I wonder if it could tell us a little bit about the history and the evolution of the data citizens conference? >>Absolutely. I think the first one is set at six years ago where we had a small event at a hotel downtown New York. Uh, most of the customers as their user conference, a lot of the banks, which are at the time of the main customers at 60 people. So very small events, and it exploded ever since, uh, this year we expect over 5,000 people. So it's really expanded beyond just the user conference to really become more of almost the community conference and the industry, um, the conference. So we're really excited, a big part of what we do, why we care so much about the conference. That's an opportunity to build that data citizens community. That's what we hear from our customers, from all attendees that come to the conference, uh, bring those people to get us all care about the same topic and are passionate about doing more at data, uh, being able to connect, uh, connect people together as a big part of that. So we've always, uh, we're always looking forwards, uh, through the event, uh, from that perspective >>Competition, of course, for virtual events these days with them, what's in it for me, what, who should attend and what can attendees expect from data citizens? 21. >>Yeah, absolutely. The good thing about the virtual event, uh, event is that everybody can attend. It's free, it's open from across the road, of course, but what we want for people to take away as attendees is that you learn something at pragmatics or the next day on the job, you can do something. You've learned something very specific. We've also been, um, um, excited and looked at what is possible from an innovation perspective. And so that's how we look at the events. We bring a lot of, um, uh, customers on my realization that they're going to share their best practices, very specifically, how they are, how they are handling data governance, how they're doing data, data, cataloging, how they're doing data privacy. So very specific best practices and tips on how to be successful, but then also industry experts that can paint the picture of where we going as an industry, what are the best practices? >>What do we need to think about today to be ready for what's going to come tomorrow? So that's a big focus. We, of course, we're going to talk about and our product. What are we, what do we have in store from a product roadmap and innovation perspective? How are we helping these organizations get their foster and not aspect as we were being in a lot of partners as well? Um, and so that's a big part of that broader ecosystem, uh, which is, which is really interesting. And I finally, like I said, it's really around the community, right? And that's what we hear continuously from the attendees. Just being able to make these connections, learn new people, learn what they're doing, how they've, uh, kind of, um, solved certain challenges. We hear that's a really big part of, uh, of the value proposition. So as an attendee, uh, the good thing is you can, you can join from anywhere. Uh, all of the content is going to be available on demand. So later it's going to be available for you to have to look at as well. Plus you're going to be farther out. You're going to become part of that data, citizens community, which has a really thriving and growing community where you're going to find a lot of like-minded people with the same passion, the same interest that McConnell learned the most from, well, I'd rather >>Like the term data citizen. I consider myself a data citizen, and it has implications just in terms of putting data in the hands of, of business users. So it's sort of central to this event, obviously. W what is a data citizen to Collibra? >>Yeah, it's, it's a really core part of our mission and our vision that we believe that today everyone needs data to do their job. Everyone in that sense has become a data citizen in the sense that they need to be able to easily access trustworthy data. We have to make it easy for people to easily find the right data that they can trust that they can understand. And I can do something like with and make their job easier. On the other hand, like a citizen, you have rights and you have responsibilities as a data citizen. You also have the responsibility to treat that data in the right way to make sure from a privacy and security perspective, that data is a as again, like I said, treated in the right way. And so that combination of making it easy, making it accessible, democratizing it, uh, but also making sure we treat data in the right way is really important. And that's a core part of what we believe that everyone is going to become a data citizen. And so, um, that's a big part of our mission. I like that >>We're to enter into a contract, I'll do my part and you'll give me access to that data. I think that's a great philosophy. So the call to action here, June 16th and 17th, go register@citizensdotcollibra.com go register because it's not just the normal mumbo jumbo. You're going to get some really interesting data. Felix, I'll give you the last word. >>No, like I said, it's like you said, go register. It's a great event. It's a great community to be part of June 16 at 17, you can block it in your calendar. So go to citizens up pretty bad outcome. It's going to be a, it's going to be a great event. Thanks for helping >>Us preview. Uh, this event is going to be a great event that really excited about Felix. Great to see you. And we'll see you on June 16th and 17th. Absolutely. All right. Thanks for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for the cube. We'll see you next time.